by christina britt lewis before gray malin was featured in the new york times this weekend, he spoke at the annual southern c summit in sea island, georgia. along with many of my heroes, mandy kellogg rye, darcy miller, libbie summers...to name a few. my hope was to learn secrets from these creative geniuses. my whole life feels like a big giant guessing game. i am always winging it. figuring it out as i go. not just with work, but with everything... marriage, parenting, friendship... i have no idea what i'm doing, you guys. i make mistakes. i learn the hard way. i was hoping to learn the easy way from these brilliant people. but instead... i heard every single one of my heroes say something like this... just in case you can't read my writing...
to hear GRAY MALIN say "i didn't really know what i was doing, but i knew it felt right. i figured it out." ...this was a BIG AHA moment for me. he talked about leaving his safe and successful career to do what he loves. he told us how hard that was for the people closest to him to understand. he knew he just wanted to make people happy. that's it. right there. that is why we do what we do... we are a designer and a therapist on a mission to make homes happy. the secret is there is no secret. everybody is winging it. everybody. nobody knows all of the answers. nobody. we are our own problem and we are our own solution. once upon a time gray malin realized he wanted to make every day feel like a getaway for people. once upon a time tim and i realized people do not need new everything to have a happy home. these sweet people were told they needed new furniture. we begged to differ...
pottery they already have and love and our inspiration... what about you? "once upon a time i realized..." what? your turn. xo... christina for all by christina britt lewis the best relationships are when both people feel like they are the lucky one. i can't believe that tim lewis picked me. i mean, TIM LEWIS, you guys. and for reasons i do not understand... he can't believe i picked him even though it's wicked obvious to like everyone 'cept for him. somebody we both went to college with called to hire us. it has been 30 years since our freshman year in college. 30 years. she explained who she was, but i remembered exactly who she was as soon as she said her name. i told her that her call felt like finally being invited to sit at the cool kid's table in the cafeteria. she said something like... yeah, you weren't cool in college, were you? all i really remember about you is that you are that girl from boston that tim lewis married. so, see? i totally am the lucky one and this is my song. can't sing it without twirling around the room. when our california client called she was all... "i can't believe you will come to san francisco!" and i was all... "i can't believe you want us to come to san francisco!" we both felt like the lucky ones. she found us on houzz and fell in love with our philosophy... you do not need all new everything to have a happy home. before... and after 1 day of shopping and 1 day of redesign... sometimes i feel like you must get tired of me saying the same things over and over again... but i swear, you guys... you can do this. you can make a fun and happy home. you can do this on a super tight budget. you can do this in a weekend. you can do this without the help of a designer. here's how... create furniture groupings that are conducive to conversation and game-playing and toasting. bring it in. closer. tighter. off the walls. collect things that make you feel all warm and happy inside. it doesn't have to be expensive to be beautiful. the only rule is "do i LOVE this?" if you LOVE it, it will work. real plants are everything. they are good for your health and good for our world and good for your soul. sooo many people say "but i can't keep them alive" ... us either. think of plants as fresh flowers. for most of us, they won't last forever. but they bring so much goodness. replace them when they die. they are not expensive. and eventually you will find plants that surprise you with their will to live. before... after... take your home less seriously. pottery handmade by the little people you love deserves a place of prominence. a bowl full of clementines on the coffee table makes people feel comfortable. they know this a place where people are more precious than things. and we can put our feet up and eat clementines in the living room if we damn well please. open your windows. fresh air, cool breezes, chirping birds, the smell of rain... my mom calls it "airing out the house" and i do it as often as the weather allows. have fun! i spent way too much of my life feeling notgoodenough, you guys. and it wasn't just in my head. it's still not. i know side eye from a highfalutin designer when i see it. some people just gotta put you down to make themselves feel better. but fear not young ones, the older you get the easier it gets and the funnier it all becomes. things that used to make me cry, now make me laugh. seriously. to everyone who feels notgoodenough... go for what you want anyway. go for the home you want. go for the relationship you want. go for the career you want. we can make our dreams come true. we must shatter our own glass ceilings. cool is overrated. we don't have to be cool to have everything we want. actually, being uncool gives us something to prove to the world. creativity comes from NOT having everything come easily to us. creativity comes from having something to rise up against. to overcome. to conquer. having something to prove to the world and proving it makes us strong. so whether it's popularity or politics, rise up. no more waiting and hoping some hero will save us. time to redesign everything. time to create the world we want. time to save ourselves. we are the hero we have been waiting for. and to the naysayers who tell me, "easy for you to say. must be nice to have people you feel lucky to be loved by." i offer you this... while there are some we need to walk away from because they just use us to get what they want, there are no perfect people. feeling lucky is a choice, a mind-shift, a way of life, a practice... feeling lucky is deciding that what you already have is enough. more than enough, actually. feeling lucky is viewing the world from a place of abundance, not scarcity. tim and i spent years living in hell on earth before we learned how to love. neither of us felt lucky for a very long time. it's easy and natural to see the flaws in people. it's harder to find the beauty. some people are super hard to love. some people make us feel very unlucky. some of those people are family and we are super stuck with them. that sucks. but i am almost 50 years old. after that many years you start to notice nobody is perfect. you are not perfect. you are hard to love too. you are. i am. we all are. own it. once you accept that you suck a whole lot too, you are better able to accept the suckiness of others. once you accept everyone's suckiness including your own, you start to see the beauty. the beauty is always there. even in the person whose political views are different from your own. even here and now in our divided united states. find the beauty. talk about what you love. celebrate the ways we are the same. problems get solved when we focus on fixing ourselves, not other people. forget about fixing others. not gonna happen. fix yourself. that's all you can do. when it comes to other people, spend time looking for the beauty. start by inviting them over for clementines in your living room. gorgeous photo above by kelly lies, who makes me feel like the luckiest person in the whole wide world. to be continued... xo... christina for all kelly and i ooohed and aaahed while she took us on a little house tour. when she showed us her charming back yard, words i thought i had forgotten from the secret garden came back to me... at first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done... then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago. frances hodgson burnett the secret garden before... after... before... after... before... after... if you look the right way, you can see that the whole wide world is a garden. frances hodgson burnett the secret garden where you tend a rose my lad, a thistle cannot grow. frances hodgson burnett the secret garden she made herself stronger by fighting the wind. frances hodgson burnett the secret garden before... after just a mini redesign... she left us pastries on installation day. we have the best clients in the whole wide world... of course there must be lots of magic in the world... but people don't know what it is like or how to make it. perhaps the beginning is just to say nice things are going to happen until you make them happen. i am going to try and experiment. frances hodgson burnett the secret garden xo... christina for all before... and after... super sexy sectional handcrafted in north carolina by our friends at the cococo kelly and i both have one of their chesterfields they are the best of the best go sit put your feet up pet paisley tell them we sent you before... and after... a perfect house is a boring house. we take our homes way too seriously. you know what happens when people come over and see toys on our floor and dishes in our sink? they love us more. because they feel less alone in their own beautiful mess. there are no rules. fill your family room with a huge comfy sectional if that makes you happy. and it's the stuff you already have and love that makes your house your home. create coziness. bake banana bread. hang your kid's art from the chandelier... before... and after... have fun! xo... christina for all by christina britt lewis she did not want all new everything. with a new house and a first baby on the way... they just wanted to love coming home without spending a fortune already. so we redesigned with what they already had plus a few new things. we moved rugs from room to room. we took apart a sectional and used the pieces in a new way. we moved the sofa from the front room to the family room with chairs from the sectional. we flanked the tv on the console from the foyer with bookshelves we found in different rooms. we found great art in a spare bedroom and gave it a proper home in the family room. we pretended their things were puzzle pieces and put them together in a fresh new way. here is what she had to say about all that... I. Am. Floored! I literally cannot stop taking everything in...it is AMAZING. There is no amount of "pinning" or test buying of things (and let's be real, patience!) that could have gotten me to the point of what you and your team did to our living space today. I am so in love with everything! The light, the HEIGHT, the use of something old and something new, to create comfortable, livable spaces...yes, multiple perfect spaces....it's amazing! before... after... When we first moved in together, years ago, I used to love to host people in our small renter 2/1 house. It was so tiny and not at all in the best of shape, but the small amount of furniture we had and the excitement of living together as a couple for the first time, making our first home, made it feel full of love, and adding good friends and food, it was something I truly enjoyed. Since moving into this house, while I was so proud to be a homeowner, it just never felt right... something was missing. I didn't care about having people over so much in hopes I would get to a better stage of togetherness... As soon as I walked in tonight, I had that feeling I have missed for so long. I felt the warmth and comfort only your own home can give you. before... after... I am so thankful, so grateful for all you have done and in such a short amount of time! While you not only made our home beautiful, you took the HUGE stress off my shoulders as I feel the time crunch get closer to bringing our first child home this summer, and that is truly priceless. I literally was losing sleep over getting this downstairs together. After meeting you last month, that very night after you left, I slept soundly, knowing we were in good hands and you absolutely delivered above and beyond. THANK YOU! you do not need all new everything to have a happy home. xo... christina for all |